Honest To God C Cups

Posted by Greg on July 15th, 2013

The neighborhood I live in has a community pool. Nothing special, just a kidney shaped hole in the ground. There are no life guards, no slides, and with a maximum depth of five feet, no diving board. It’s basically a place where you can go when it’s 118° outside and you want to experience for yourself just how hot water can get when it sits in a scorching hot concrete tub all day. So on the weekends, I like to take the kids to the municipal pool, which is much cooler, has slides and other water-related things to play with, and is a beach-style pool, meaning that I have to keep a death-grip on my four year old most of the time instead of all of it.

The other thing about the beach-style pool is that, much like the real beach, it attracts large mammals which wash up on shore to die, apparently of arteriosclerosis. Look, I understand that a lot of people have issues with weight, and I’m certainly not suggesting that people with a weight problem should hide behind closed blinds all day. But there has got to be a more flattering place to lie down than in three inches of water. I swear, every single person who qualified as morbidly obese could be found on that part of the beach, like a desert version of Fisherman’s Wharf.

You’re right, there is a lot of chlorine in the pool today…

Now normally, I wouldn’t really care, except it raised the odds that my four year old, wide-eyed and innocent as he is, would say something inappropriate. You know how it is with toddlers: They say everything at 230 decibels unless they’re standing right next to you, and then they speak even louder. And what comes out of their mouth is as likely to be offensive as it is funny or cute. So when my son shouted, “HAHAHAHA!!! Look at that guy! He has BOOBS!” I was horrified, but hardly surprised.

Of course, I apologized profusely to the man in question because someone had to do it. My son, oblivious, had run off to play his favorite game: Floating face down in the water to scare the lifeguards. “I am so sorry. He’s only four.” I told the man with boobs. Now, I understand that being mocked by a four year old is not exactly going to be a boost for your self-esteem, but when you’re really, really large, you’ve got to come to terms with the fact that little kids might say inappropriate things around you. I mean, if I had a small dog growing out of the side of my head, I would absolutely expect kids, hell, even parents, to say things like, “Holy fucking shit! Is that a goddamn dog growing out of your head?”

But man-boobs was very upset, and muttered something I couldn’t quite catch, but sounded like an entreaty to teach my kids some manners. Dude, he’s four, you weigh at least 350 pounds, and you’re rocking some honest to God c-cups. What the fuck do you expect to happen? Lying in three inches of water, you’re lucky he didn’t throw you a fucking fish.

Of course, by the time I caught up with my son, two whole seconds had elapsed and he’d forgotten about the incident entirely, making it impossible to use it as a learning opportunity.

Me: Hey, what you sad to that man over there wasn’t very nice.

Son: What?

Me: You said something about that man over there, remember?

Son: I’m a sea monster! AAARRRGGGHHH!!! (splashes in water)

Me: Hey! Listen to me! This is very important. What you said to that man over there…

Son: What man? (looking at everyone nearby angrily as if they’d just snitched on him)

Me: That large man over there…

Son: (337 decibels) THEY’RE ALL LARGE! THOSE GUYS ARE FAT!

Me: (picking up my son and hustling him to the deep end of the pool) If you don’t say another word today, I will buy you a pony.

Here’s another lesson for you, Junior: Always read the fine print.

What really worried me was the fact that we had a planned outing the next day: We were going to the local bowling alley, not exactly known for sensibly portioned salads and tapered waistlines. If I didn’t want a howling mob of people throwing deep-fried cheese sticks at my children the next day, I’d need to nip this in the bud now.

So I patiently explained to my son that “…some people are larger than other people, and some people look different than other people, and that’s ok. What really matters is that we’re all nice people, and we certainly don’t want to make people sad by saying mean things, do we?”

My son shifted restlessly in my grasp, eyes roaming over the scores of children lucky enough to not have a father intent on teaching fucking life-lessons in the goddamn pool. “Ok, daddy,” he said, more to get me to let him go than because he understood what I was talking about.

“Ok, so we won’t say anything about large people, right? And especially we won’t say anything about guys with boobs, right?”

The little light-bulb went off over my son’s head, and he finally realized what I was talking about. “But daddy, THAT GUY HAD BOOBS!”

“I know, but it’s not nice to say so.”

“BOOBS LIKE MOMMY!”

I know that’s disturbing, but at least they don’t let Steven Tyler in the pool any more.

He looked at me with an amazed look on his face, as if he’d just seen a dog flying a jetpack or something equally incongruous. And that’s when I realized that I had to drop the discussion for the moment, and play it off like it was no big deal. People remember and are influenced by strange things experienced as a child, and I envisioned myself twelve years from now ruing the day that I over-lectured my son on man-boobs while I cleaned out his browser history of such search terms as “chubby chasers”, “big-titted ho’s”, or “fold fuckers”.

To my great relief, my son didn’t say anything inappropriate at the bowling alley the next day. He did amaze me by bowling a 107 and a 109, which for a four year old is incredible and professional bowlers looking like they do, makes me wonder if he’s not planning on growing a majestic set of man-boobs for himself.

My MIL is constantly pointing out to our kids how fat she is. Most annoying is the fact that she won’t be the one out in public with them when they just casually remind a fat person that they’re fat. Grate.

I buy toys for your kids and then fuck off to my room so that you have to deal with the bullshit and then I come back later and look at you like you’ve lost your mind because after spending all day breaking up fights and trying to keep your kids from destroying the few valuable possessions you have, while also cooking and cleaning, you’ve somehow become irritable and aren’t just smiling at how much of a blessing your babies are. What’s wrong with you?

I want to be four sometimes. Like everyone, I know a few people who are “large” and I’m constantly reigning myself in when they talk about it. What the hell do you think is going to happen if you eat a burger ever 2 hours and wash it down with another fucking burger? I’d like a political correctness moratorium, or just a holiday once a year, so I could say the shit your kid says.

I know that weight is a real problem for some people, and they try hard, they fail, they try again, succeed, then fall back on old habits, etc. And it sucks, and I feel sorry for them, and I wish they could just magically get fixed.

But, like you, when someone is bitching about their weight while they’re eating deep fried lard, come on… I call bullshit.

I was at a salad bar down here when I noticed the “salad” that a largish woman in front of me was constructing. Ham, hard boiled eggs, quarts of ranch dressing, and enough bacon bits that, if you had the inclination, you could reassemble into an actual pig. Very much a non-salad. And then she turns to her friend and says, “I can’t wait until I’m through with this diet.”

I assume that food is to some people what smoking is to me – the greatest and worst thing in the world. But if someone (ie. every fucking person with the capacity to speak) can give me unsolicited advice about quitting smoking, I want to be able to give unsolicited advice about eating shit food. I blame Oprah…

I read, a whole bunch of years back, about a woman who took her toddler daughter into the bank with her and got stuck in a very long line. The toddler got increasingly impatient, and began to demand that they leave.

Finally, after being rebuffed one time too many, the little girl said as loud as she could, “Mommy, if we don’t leave right now, I’m going to tell grandma that I saw you kissing daddy’s wee-wee!”